The U.S. Shouldn't Give Israel or Ukraine Any More Money

It's always concerning when any federal legislation gets solid bipartisan support. That's certainly the case with the U.S. Senate's overwhelming support on Tuesday for a $95 billion supplemental foreign aid package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

Only two Democrats, one independent, and 26 Republicans voted against sending billions of dollars to conflicts that the U.S. is neither a belligerent in nor stands much of a chance of changing the outcome of with more money.

To hear supporters of the additional spending tell it, this aid isn't necessarily about changing the course of either war. Rather, it's about reminding the world we're still a "leader."

"With this bill, the Senate declares that American leadership will not waver, will not falter, will not fail," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) after the vote, per the Wall Street Journal.

"There are no guarantees that Ukraine will defeat Russia," said Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) on the Senate floor prior to the vote. But billions more in aid "allows America to remain the leader of the free world, and it shows that we honor our word to our friends and allies."

The 26 Republicans who voted against the aid bill—citing its fiscal impact, the more pressing need for federal resources at the southern border, and/or the hopelessness of a Ukrainian victory—were choosing "to forget about world leadership," wrote New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

The three non-Republican nos—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Peter Welch (D–Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.)—all based their opposition on the civilian casualties Israel is inflicting in Gaza.

One would think that "leadership" would involve more than just throwing money at interminable conflicts. It should also involve some judgment about what U.S. aid money is actually buying, whether the sticker price is worth it, and if we truly need to be the ones picking up the tab.

If U.S. leaders were to exercise more of the judgment that "world leadership" requires, they'd be sending $0 to either Ukraine or Israel.

The case for cutting aid to Israel is the easiest to make. It's a wealthy state with a modern military and plenty of resources at its disposal to prosecute its war in Gaza. Israeli taxpayers could easily cover military spending that U.S. taxpayers are currently shouldering. It doesn't need the additional $14 billion the Senate aid bill would send it.

The humanitarian case for cutting off U.S. support should also be compelling to anyone watching Gaza being turned into the lunar surface with U.S.-funded weapons. Even if it's not, cutting off U.S. aid is one of those odd horseshoe issues that unites critics and some supporters of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.

People who think Israel is too aggressive in prosecuting the war, and needlessly killing civilians as a result, have argued against more U.S. aid given how complicit it makes us in the slaughter.

"I cannot vote to send more bombs and shells to Israel when they are using them in an indiscriminate manner against Palestinian civilians," said Sen. Merkley, one of the Democratic 'no's votes, in a statement explaining his vote.

On the other side of the issue are Israeli hawks who think U.S. aid comes with endless humanitarian conditions that handicap Israel's war effort.

"The biggest issue now is the control [U.S. aid] gives over our foreign policy. It is a concession of sovereignty and the decision making," said former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren on the EconTalk podcast earlier this month. "Even in the United States, they say, 'We can criticize Israel because we pay taxes.'"

Both sides are dissatisfied with the current middle ground the Biden administration is hewing of supplying weapons to Israel on the condition that they don't kill too many people with them.

To defend this middle ground, the Biden administration also has to go through the awkward contortions of arguing that Israel is a sovereign nation that doesn't have to answer to the U.S. while also trying to enforce humanitarian limitations on the use of U.S.-provided weapons.

All the money the U.S. is sending Israel certainly hasn't made the Israeli government more open to the Biden administration's pressure for a ceasefire or a post-war recognition of a Palestinian state.

So, if U.S. aid to Israel isn't improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, isn't changing the course of the war, and is making everyone mad, why keep giving it?

Much the same can be said of U.S. aid to Ukraine, which at first blush, presents a more sympathetic case for American support.

Ukraine is a poor country that can't as easily pay for its own defense against a more powerful authoritarian invader. U.S. weaponry is arguably essential in keeping its war effort alive in the short term.

That still leaves unanswered the larger questions of what Ukraine with U.S. aid can realistically achieve and what risks the U.S. runs by continuing to provide it.

The U.S. has committed $44 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, plus another $30 billion in nonmilitary aid. All told, Congress has appropriated $113 billion in military and nonmilitary Ukraine-related spending.

The result is a World War I–style stalemate that shows no signs of abating. A much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive last year failed to change this reality. An endless supply of Western weaponry can't erase the fact that Ukraine is running out of men for its army.

The grim reality is that even with another $60 billion, Ukraine is not going to be able to evict Russian troops from its pre-war borders.

"If Ukraine remains indefinitely on the defensive, then the areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia will remain in Russian hands—not legally, of course, but de facto," wrote Quincy Institute scholar Anatol Lieven at Responsible Statecraft last week.

The unavoidable takeaway is that Ukraine's war against Russia can, at best, end in a negotiated peace that cedes to Russia some of the territory it already controls.

Lieven suggests that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's shake-up of the country's military leadership, and the political turmoil generally in Ukraine, is primarily about politicians trying to position themselves so that they don't get the blame for the eventual negotiated peace.

How Ukraine eventually decides to make peace with Russia is obviously up to that country and its leaders to decide. Still, if you subsidize something, you get more of it. By continuing to fund Ukraine's war effort, the U.S. is encouraging the country to keep playing out the bloody status quo rather than begin the politically fraught, but inevitable, process of hashing out a peace agreement.

The lack of benefits of U.S Ukraine aid is compounded by the serious risks it runs that our proxy war with Russia becomes an actual war with Russia. That would be truly disastrous for the entire globe.

Supporters of continued Ukraine aid often try to minimize its cost by comparing it to ever larger buckets of federal spending.

"We were told that we couldn't afford the $60 billion for Ukraine-related funding. But somehow, we can afford an $850 billion defense budget and annual trillion-dollar deficits," said Romney during his floor remarks.

We actually can't afford those things either. To argue Ukraine aid is a drop in the bucket is to take the perverse position that the more bloated the defense budget, and the higher the deficit, the less we should care about each additional dollar spent.

The willingness to just throw money at foreign policy problems is how we got our current oversized defense budget. The pitifully little we have to show for all that money spent is one of the reasons that a sizable portion of Republican lawmakers are willing to vote against more spending on foreign wars.

Whether that growing skepticism of foreign military aid on the right will be enough to sink the Senate's aid bill in the Republican-controlled House remains to be seen.

War continues to be a bipartisan vote-getter.

Still, one can't shake the ultimate conclusion that U.S. aid isn't changing the outcome of the war in Ukraine or Gaza. It's just changing who ultimately has to pay the monetary price for them.